Friday, May 01, 2015

Baptists and the early church

Benjamin Keach, one of the signatories to the 1689 Baptist Confession

What do the words ‘Baptists’ and ‘early
church’ suggest to you when are mentioned side by side? – ‘NT baptism’, or
‘baptisteries’, or ‘archaeology’,or
‘Spanish churches’, or ‘fonts, sizes of’, or ‘paedobaptism, growth of’, or
something similar? In other words, the words suggest the discussion of the idea
of the waning of normative credo-baptism in the early Christian era, or its continuation
in those years longer than is usually allowed for, even perhaps until the
Constantinian Settlement.

Thus there has been discussion of the
baptistery in Stobi, in former Yugoslavia.Set centrally into the floor of a church there is a big circular font (piscina) 2m. in diameterand 1.3m. deep. Its use would be expected to
cause more of a splash than the daintier bird-bath fonts that are more regular.
And naturally, among Baptists, it leads to the thought, May the size of this (and
other?) baptisteries be evidence of the practice of the immersion of believers?
In other words, the ’Baptists’ and ‘early church’ bring together historical
and archaeological arguments, including those derived from church architecture,
for the normativeness of credo-baptism in churches of this period.

‘Without
body , parts and passions’

However, on this occasion we are not going to dip our
toes into the by-waters of the history of credo-baptism. Instead I am going to
put my toe into the relation between Baptists, Particular Baptists in this case,
and the early Christian church in respect of the doctrine of God. More precisely, the
affirmation that God is ‘without body, parts and passions’, a phrase borrowed
from the Westminster Confession of Faith on which the Baptist Confession of
1689 largely modelled. Or perhaps more accurately, is modelled from the Savoy
Confession of 1658. This phrase was in turn borrowed from theIrish Articles of 1615, which in turn was taken from the XXXIX Articles
of the Church of England (Article I) (1571), which borrowed from the Forty Two
Articles of 1553. The language is Cranmer’s, then.

What is the significance of these facts? First,
note the rather brave and gracious way these Baptists proceeded. In the times
when Baptists were persecuted in England (Bunyan put in Bedford jail for
preaching Christ, and so forth), they nonetheless appropriated for their own
confessions the language of the magistrates and bishops of the persecuting
Church of England. (And the same would have been true, I reckon, had the
Parliament of the 1640’s had had its way, and its anti-blasphemy legislation
but into practice, they had been on the receiving end of Westminster Confession-style
persecution. But Cromwell intervened.

I dare say that if we studied the
confessional history of the Protestant Church of England we would find many
other such ‘borrowings’. Why was this?

Was it because these lower-class, uneducated
non-conformists could not think for themselves? No, obviously not. Many of
their ministers had been educated. And they were persecuted and discriminated
against precisely because they thought for themselves on the sacraments, church
order and toleration. This is shown by
the fact that an earlier Baptist Confession, of 1644, (sometimescalled the First London Confession
of Faith) confesses the same God though in different wording, “That God…..is a
Spirit who, as his being is of himself, so he gives being, moving and
preservationto all other things, being
in himself eternall, most holy, every way infinite in greatnesse, wisdom, power
justice…’ Though it has to be said that the words of the 1689 Confession are an appreciable improvement on this.

So why this confessional continuity?

Before we attempt to answer this question,
let us consider the phrase itself. It is saying what God is not, especially by
denying to him properties that are essentially creaturely. We have bodies,
parts and passions, and God is not like ourselves. This is what the Second
Commandment asserts; nothing creaturely is fit to 'image' God, to help focus
attention on him in worship.That ways
lies idolatry. As the seventeenth-century Reformed divines routinely state,
numbering among them (and making this inclusion at some personal risk, it might
be said) the Reformed or Particular Baptists, God cannot be comprehended but he is apprehended, and the way in which he is
apprehended is through his Word, including the various figurative ways in which
he accommodates himself to us. (Interesting that; we are not to make God’s
creation represent him, but his figurative words about himself in Scripture we
can use, as well of course as the non-figurative expressions.)

This language of God as being 'without body,
parts and passions' takes us back beyond the Reformed theology of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries to that of the medieval and patristic periods. They
share this outlook on the doctrine of God as much as did, say, Calvin and the
later Reformed Orthodox.And so by their
endorsement of it these Particular Baptistsshow that they are positively
related to the catholic ‘spine’ of the church. They avowed and were not
embarrassed by these sentiments occurring in historic Baptist confessions.

This is not true of all Baptists. Many Baptists
situate themselves in the wider evangelical ethos, for whom God is much more
‘dynamic’ and ‘dramatic’.If as Baptists
they are at all aware of the historic Confessions of the Particular Baptists, they
are rather dismissive of this language. For them it is a good example of the way
in which biblical language about God was corrupted by a cold and purely
cerebral language derived not from Scripture but from Greek philosophy. If such
people value the earl Baptist Confessions at all it is because of their Augustinian
soteriology, not because of this rather ‘remote’ and ‘static’ language
regarding God, that he is without body, parts and passions. They might even say,
how can such an aloof God, so much unlike ourselves who have been created in
the image of God, be regarded as a loving and caring God?

So the Particular Baptists who are endorsing
the thought of the historic Christian theology as mediated through the English
confessional tradition, are swimming against that Baptist tide, being carried along by
a theological current that is going in the opposite direction. Thinking ecclesiologically for a moment, we might say that that tide
is antisectarian. Political and
social circumstances have often meant that Baptists have been regarded as a
sect. But Baptists, or some Baptists, regard themselves as very much in the line
ofcatholic theology, of the early creeds
and councils of the church.

Recently Samuel Renihan has gathered
together statements of many Reformed theologians (and some others) into a
Reader. It is a considerable achievement, historically arranged showing how the idea of
an impassible God was thought about and discussed by adherents to it, from
roughly the period 1500-1700. It includes some particular Baptists, and
extracts from confessional documents. (God
without Passions: A Reader ed. Samuel. With a Foreword by Carl Trueman.
(Palmdale Ca. Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2015))

There is one thing to notice about how these
men thought. Divine impassibility was not an isolated quirk. They show that it
is possible to be committed to impassibility and for the remainder of the
understanding of God to be unaffected.

The
package deal

So consider the following typical extracts,
taken from the Renihan Reader

Wolfgang Musculus

First therefore of the essence of God it is
most truly said, that is one alone setting before us one God:now let jus look what else may be
conveniently said thereof. Surely there is many other things, but fir this
present we think good to rehearse but a few, as, that it is not made of any
other thing but simple and pure. With simplicity it agreeth that he is a
spirit: with the pureness, he is called a light in which there is no darkness.
It is also without body with simplicity, occupying no place, incomprehensible,
immutable, indivisible, impassible, incorruptible, immortal, unspeakable
perfect & everlasting: which all appertaineth to the consideration of the
quality of God’s being.

William Ames

The will of God is
single and onely one in God.

The will of God is
unchangeable:because he always willeth
the same, and in the same manner Psal.
33.1. The counsel of the Lord remaineth forever.

The will of God is
eteranall; because hee doth not begin to will before he would not, nor ceaseth
to will that which before hee willed. Mala.
3.6. I Jehova change not.

The will of God
may be said to be infinite: because it hath no outward limitation.

The affections
which are given to God in Scripture, as love, hatred, and the like, doe either
set forth acts of the wil, or doe agree to God figuratively.

Thomas Cartwright

Q.
What is Simplenesse or Singlenesse in God?

A.It is an Attribute of God,
whereby is noted, that euery thing that is in God, is God himself.And therefore
he is vncompounded, without parts, inuisible, impassible, all essence:whence it
is , that hee is not onely called holy, but holinesse; not onely iust,but iustice, &c.

Q.
What learne you thereby?

A. That he is no sorte mutable, or changeable but in all things euer
one and the same, without any alteration, or shadow of change.

Stephen
Charnock

If God
were not a Spirit, he were not immutable and unchangeable. His immutabilitydepends upon
his simplicity. He is unchangeable in his essence, because he is a pure and
unmixed spiritual Being.

Christopher Blackwood (Particular Baptist)

Properties
of the perfection in God

1. It’s independent. The creatures may be
perfect in their kinde, yet they depend on something else; as a River though it
be a perfect River, yet it stands need either of the fountain or of the sea to
maintain it. He stands not in need of Princes, of men and Angels. Though he use
them as instruments, it is not because he cannot act and bring about his ends
without them, for he that could make the heavens and earth by the wordof his mouth, Psal. 33.6. what cannot he do?

This post has gone on for long enough. Next time we shall look at patterns of thought that such a way of thinking about God
exemplifies.

About Me

Each Month

In general, early each month the draft of a paper on a topic in philosophical theology is posted, and often a shorter more occasional piece in mid-month.

Augustine

'It is a matter of no moment in the city of God whether he who adopts the faith that brings omen to God adopts it in one dress and manner of life or another, so long as he lives in conformity with the commandments of God. And hence, when philosophers themselves become Christians, they are compelled, indeed, to abandon their erroneous doctrines, but not their dress and mode of living, which are no obstacle to religion.'